Maya Angelou And Lorde Analysis

In 2011 Melissa Harris-Perry, a well-known author, political-commentator and professor of feminist, black and American politics, wrote in her novel, Sister Citizen, “Sisters are more than the sum of their relative disadvantages: they are active agents who craft meaning out of their circumstances and do so in complicated and diverse ways.” (263) This quote reaffirms the ideas of those who have come before her, that the issues black women face are equally different and difficult from one to the next, but that each example of how these women have overcome and prospered and made meaning out of their struggle inspires others in the same position to overcome and do the same. Jordan, Angelou and Lorde were all authors and poets who spent much of their

time composing works that advocated for LGBTQ rights, civil rights, and women’s rights in the second half of the twentieth century. All three authors were active members of the Civil Rights movement and continued on to write about their experiences during and after the movement, considerably, becoming some of the most influential black feminist authors of their time. Maya Angelou’s “Still I Rise”, June Jordan’s “Poem About My Rights”, and Lorde’s “A Litany for Survival” all examine the struggles of living as a black woman in America, and how all three of these poets found freedom in accepting their identity as black women in a predominantly white male run society. The topics discussed in this paper could potentially affect the ways in which any person studying the works of these three poets, literary critics and those studying post-civil rights era literature view works of these authors, or works from this time period as a whole. These poems were all written in the latter half of the twentieth century, after the civil rights movement had taken place. As the second half of the 1900s was a tumultuous period in American history, these poems all reflect the ways in which society viewed minorities (particularly black women) during this time, and the ways in which these minorities were expected to conform to the standards set for them and view themselves the way society viewed them. Instead of accepting what society thought of them, however, these women chose to view their backgrounds with pride and fight back against the societal expectations that were placed upon them, and in doing so, inspired others to do the same.
Angelou works to create a mood of inequality between herself and the “you” with whom she converses in her poem, establishing her position as higher than whoever she is speaking to through her arguments against them and through the tone is which she speaks to them. Throughout her poem “Still I Rise” Angelou creates the structure of a conversation between the speaker of the poem and the unnamed “you” who appears to be unhappy with the way the speaker is conducting herself. This dissatisfaction can be viewed in the many questions the speaker asks the ”you” and the assumptions she makes about how her attitude affects them, this is illustrated especially in line 6, when the speaker asks “Why are you beset with gloom?” This “you” can be viewed as representative of the society in which Angelou and black women in general are forced to live in, a society in which the speaker is condemned for embracing parts of her personality which are viewed as undesirable and disturbing to those in this white and male dominated society who oppose the speaker and her level of comfort with herself. Although the force of this society puts pressure on the speaker to bend and give in to their demands, saying that she should not embrace these traits which society looks down upon and that she should instead hide them away, the speaker chooses to ignore the disdain with which they view her and instead welcomes these traits as a part of who she is, promising that despite their best efforts she will still rise above their hatefulness and negativity. In this conversation, the speaker manages to not only avoid giving into the demands of this society, but is able to elevate her status to one that is above that of the other half of the conversation in the way she speaks to them. In lines 5-6 the speaker asks “Does my sassiness upset you? Why are you beset with gloom?” giving the reader the sense that the speaker is almost mocking the other person in the conversation, commenting on the reaction they seem to have in response to her attitude and her “sassiness.” This same kind of patronizing speech is used again in lines 17-18 where the speaker asks “Does my haughtiness offend you? Don’t you take it awful hard” creating a mocking tone very similar to the one in lines five and six, again serving to elevate the author’s position to one of a higher status than those she is speaking to. Angelou’s you vs. I structure emphasizes the speaker’s seemingly effortless rejection of the expectations society tries to impose on her, through the imagery of the speaker rising far above the “you” and its complaints about her personality.
In her poem “A Litany for Survival”, Lorde creates a similar binary to that created in Maya Angelou’s “Still I Rise”, demonstrating the power of the marginalized group against the “they” and “them” mentioned throughout the poem.

Lorde establishes this binary in the very first line in saying “For those of us”, which immediately sets up the structure of “us” vs. “them”, with the “us” being the speaker as well as minorities, and the “them” seeming to be society in general and anyone who works towards the marginalization of minorities. Lorde discusses some of the problems which being part of the “us” entails, including not being able to “indulge in the passing dreams of choice” as the “they” in the poem can, presumably because they enjoy privileges not afforded to minorities and will not face criticism for their indulgence, and the fear that they have been “imprinted” with since they were children. While these seem to merely be examples of why the “us” in the poem should just give in and accept the little that the “they” have given them and continue to “seek a now that can breed futures” for their children rather than take things for themselves, Lorde argues that these are the exact reasons why those who are marginalized and discriminated against should fight back against the “they” who fight to keep them in the same place of fear and hopelessness. Lorde asserts that since those who are marginalized are already living in fear and live a life in which they cannot do the things they wish to do, they should fight back and find their power in the fact that they “were never meant to survive” (24) in the first place. Since the “us” in the poem is already living in constant fear, Lorde contests that they can only be freed from this fear through speaking up and living their lives the way they want, since things can’t get worse for them and the “they” already have placed confines on what they can and cannot do. Lorde argues that through their weaknesses, those who are

marginalized have the power to make the greatest change, as they have the least to lose. After living in fear of loss for so long, Lorde pushes the idea that the fear they are filled with is their fuel to fight back against “them” and to earn a better life for themselves and others who, like them, live in fear.
In June Jordan’s “Poem About My Rights”, Jordan also creates a binary between the speaker and an oppressor, Jordan’s version of this binary, however, differs slightly from the binaries created by both Angelou and Lorde, in which they personify the society which is oppressing the speaker into a singular party, and instead portrays the oppressor in the multiple forms in which Jordan has experienced it. The forms these oppressors take come to include a male rapist in Paris, South Africa forcing its culture onto the African countries surrounding it, the speaker’s own parents and even the speaker herself, for accepting and conforming to the criticisms of society in her past. Jordan finds her power in a very different place than Angelou’s natural charm and charisma, and Lorde’s fear and anguish: Jordan finds power in her anger and indignation at her always being told, whether by her parents or society, that she has been born “the wrong” way. Throughout her poem, Jordan builds upon her anger, adding example after example of the injustices that minorities, especially women and African Americans, face in their day-to-day lives until she finally explodes, exclaiming in line 109 “I am not wrong: Wrong is not my name My name is my own my own my own” and in doing so Jordan establishes that she will no longer stand back and let society tell her that she is not good enough, and that from now on she will determine her own worth. In declaring her independence from the judgement of society, Jordan gains power over herself and says that she will be fighting this society through her “daily and nightly self-determination” (113) and proves that even though she was, at one point, part of the problem herself, that it’s never too late for those who are oppressed to change their minds about themselves and fight back against the society that they live in.
In her examination of Audre Lorde’s life, in Warrior Poet: A Biography of Audre Lorde, Alexis De Veaux examines Lorde’s use of “we” and “us” throughout her poem and its purpose in unifying the reader with the speaker and any other “radicalized identities,” placing the reader alongside the speaker in her fight against her fears and her fear of those who try to oppress her throughout the poem. De Veaux argues that Lorde intends for the “we” from the poem have to stand together and to articulate their fears to escape the power of the “them” from the poem who work to oppress the speaker. This idea of unification with the speaker to stand up and speak out against the “them” resounds throughout countless other works, including Angelou’s “Still I Rise” and Jordan’s “Poem About My Rights.” While Angelou and Jordan don’t utilize the same rhetoric techniques as Lorde in her use of “us” and “we,” their first-person accounts have a similar affect in aligning the reader’s experiences and views with those of the speaker in their poems. De Veaux argues that the courage of the speaker to fight back comes from this alliance between the reader and the speaker. De Veaux’s thoughts reinforce the ideas of Jordan, Lorde and Angelou on the importance of self-acceptance and the significance of aligning together to fight back against societal expectations. Creating the binary of “us vs. them” throughout their works, and allowing the reader to be a part of the ingroup, is considerably the most powerful piece of rhetoric each of these poets could have utilized to argue their point. Granting the reader a place inside of the ingroup in their works allows the reader to fully see the point of view of what it’s like to be a minority, particularly a black woman, whether it be through Angelou’s “Still I Rise”, in which the reader feels the desperate and constant pull of the oppressor trying to bring the speaker down, or the despair and constant fear experienced by the speaker in “A Litany for Survival” or the frustration at not being able to control ever their own body that the speaker in Jordan’s “Poem About My Rights” endures every day. Through each of these works, the alignment of the reader with the speaker gives them a new insight into the society that has exploited black women their entire lives.